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About 200 people rallied Thursday at the Statehouse against a wide-ranging set of policies they say favor wealthy Kansans at the expense of those of lower socio-economic status.

The rally, hosted by Kansas People's Action, included several speakers. Some pushed for Medicaid expansion, and some decried educational inequality or family separation due to immigration policies. Others focused their ire on an income tax exemption for business owners spearheaded by Gov. Sam Brownback and a list of some 20,000 voter registrations that have been held up by proof-of-citizenship requirements Secretary of State Kris Kobach pushed.

The Rev. Reuben Eckels likened the voter registration and identification requirements that went into effect in 2012 and 2013 to "new Jim Crow laws."

"Our ancestors fought and died so that we could actually exercise our right to vote," Eckels said. "But now those rights are being trampled on again by new restrictions and justifications for making voting harder."

Kobach told a legislative committee Wednesday that his office will soon reduce the registration suspension list by about 7,700 through cross-checking birth records with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

He also said those whose registrations are incomplete get multiple notifications about their status, have their choice of about 10 official documents to prove citizenship, and have multiple avenues to submit those documents.

That didn’t mollify the protesters, including high school senior McKenzie Ortiz, who said that when she turned 18 she immediately attempted to register to vote, only to end up on the suspended list.

"A truly successful democracy is one that fosters and encourages participation from everyone, regardless of skin color, gender or age," Ortiz said.

Kobach said via email that the protesters are at odds with the majority of Kansans who approve of the voting laws and his office has "bent over backwards to make it easy for people to comply with our law."

"These protesters are complaining about barriers that do not exist," Kobach said. "I have yet to see any United States citizen in the state of Kansas who is unable to register to vote because of our proof-of-citizenship requirement."

Criticism also was leveled at a pillar of Brownback's tax cut plan that exempted from state income tax all nonwage "pass-through" money earned by owners of businesses that are organized as limited liability companies, sole proprietorships, partnerships and S-corps.

Sulma Arias, executive director of Kansas People's Action, said in a prepared statement that Brownback's plan shifts the tax burden from employers to employees.

"He is turning our state into a corporate tax haven, a Cayman Islands of the Midwest where CEOs and the ultra, ultra-rich are responsible to nobody and where life gets harder and harder for hard-working families," Arias said.

David Kensinger, who works for Brownback's re-election campaign, noted the governor's tax plan also dropped income tax rates and Kansas' unemployment rate is among the nation's 10 lowest.

"We have an economy with the lowest unemployment rate in more than five years, have put money back in the hands of working Kansans, and are creating jobs across the state," said Eileen Hawley, Brownback's spokeswoman. "This benefits Kansans at all economic levels."

Brownback has called the tax exemption, which applies to about 191,000 Kansas business owners, a "shot of adrenaline to the heart" of the state's economy, saying it will spur small-business job growth and higher wages.

But Mark Potter, a military veteran and long-time union worker, said he isn’t seeing the benefits.

"While big business benefits from tax cuts, they use these tax cuts to increase their profits and not worker wages," Potter said.

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After Kobach left office as chairman , a Federal Elections Commission audit strongly criticized Kobach's financial management of the Kansas Republican Party. The FEC audit found that when the Kobach served as chairman, the state party failed to pay state and federal taxes. It was also discovered that illegal contributions were accepted

It's not hard to register to vote. If my children were 18, they would already be registered as I have their birth certificates in a safe deposit box just waiting. Not hard at all. People want free handouts, not have to work, and have the rich pay for their cable and smart phone. If these people really think we have such a bad situation here in Kansas, please feel free to move West to liberal Colorado. Smoke some pot and lay around!!!!!!

"A truly successful democracy is one that fosters and encourages participation from everyone, regardless of skin color, gender or age," Ortiz said."

None of those things have anything whatsoever to do with proving you are a citizen of the United States. However, AGE does come into play because you have to be 18 to vote. Are we now letting those younger than that cast ballots?

"...have their choice of about 10 official documents to prove citizenship, and have multiple avenues to submit those documents." 10 documents allowed to prove citizenship and these people can't come up with one?

"Eckels said the voting requirements disproportionately affect low-income and black populations." Always playing the race card. Don't black people get birth certificates too?

many of these people will also be filing for their EITC refunds soon as well...huge refunds even though they pay little or no income tax and financed by other workers who work hard for that higher wage and are forced to fund that credit as well as the rest of the free stuff...

The headline says "hundreds" rally. Then the article says, "about 200" which means that there were not even 200. Hundreds means more than one hundred yet not even 200 were at the rally. If the media math is like most events they cover, the number is very inflated. I have personally counted numbers attending various rallies over the years. If it is a bunch of liberals holding a rally you can bet the count will be inflated. I recall as Sonny Scroggins rally and I counted 34 people at the rally. Later that night on the news, it was reported as about a "hundred" attended the rally. Only with media math is 34 about a "hundred".

2 is more than 1. About 2 does means maybe less than 2 or more than 2. It means the author thinks there was "about two hundred" people there. Why even bring up this detail when the issue is many people bothered to take time on a work day to go to the Capitol on a very cold day to let the Republicans know they are fed up with the way this government takes from the poor and gives to the rich. It has been two years since the governor got the legislators to vote for this tax law. Two years with what result? If jobs, good paying jobs as the governor promised, have resulted why is their still people looking for work? In addition where is the list of the companies that have hired more people and is paying them a livable wage? How many jobs have been produced compared to how many jobs have been lost? Today it was announced a company that hired 200 people is leaving Topeka and not taking employees with them. This after a new building was built just for them. It is time to stop giving companies breaks to entice them to come here. They just knife us in the back after they use up all our give aways like Bowing did.

was crying on the senate podium last year because his buddies want to eliminate the EITC.

Hard to believe a REPUBLICAN will receive huge refunds even though they pay little or no income tax and financed by other workers who work hard for that higher wage and are forced to fund that credit as well as the rest of the free stuff... 'catsncats'

Kansas Senator's Plea for the "Working Poor"Sen. Mitch Holmes, R-St. John, offered an impassioned plea to his fellow lawmakers in early April about a proposed reduction to the state's Earned Income Tax Credit, designed to help lower-income working Kansas families.

"I am the working poor," the Wichita Eagle quoted from Holmes' speech to the Senate. "And I know that there's at least one other senator in here who is classified as the working poor."

Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, commended Holmes for his comments, saying the statements help "humanize" the credit discussion for other senators.

Holmes' story isn't unlike many Kansans, and it is a story his fellow legislators need to hear and consider as they perform the work of governing on behalf of Kansans.

While Holmes works as a legislator for part of the year, he said his salary isn't enough to raise his five children. He struggles to find work in the off-session and relies on the EITC to help sustain his family from April through January, between legislative sessions.

"I literally max out my earned income credit the last three years," Holmes told the Senate.

American Heritage Dictionary definition of fascism: "...a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

via tax-cuts, there is always a trade-off. Most of those cuts go to the wealthiest who give their pet candidates handsome rewards (we once called this "bribery"). So the visionary team of Republicans had to divert government expense to the people via the sales tax among other sources. Government isn't free, but it is yours.

The governor is waiting out the outcome of the income changes.

Segue back to GWB's experimentation with the same old idea. Do you remember getting back your "tax refund" each May? What did you do with it? Pay a bill? For most people, that refund wasn't much. Actually, it was laughable.

Meanwhile, we were funding two big wars with future projections of costing up to $3 trillion. That was all debt accruing. And Halliburton Cheney comforted us all by saying, "Deficits don't matter." Right. Like "corporations are people, my friend." And since Obama took office, what was the right-wing refrain? "Deficits are killing us!" I guess we can have it both ways when we are in the GOP.

Look up graphs and you will find that the magic tax-cut red carpet for America pushed the debt upward like a rocket in Reagan's and Dubya's "free market" experiments. You were the Guinea pig in those experiments.

Then came the crash of 2007, when the housing bubble burst. Bush2 might have said, "Sorry about that. Here, Obama, you deal with it." And what was the GOP on the Hill doing? Still reading from the same old tax-cut script with an obstructionist game unparalleled in history. They finally almost wrecked the world economy just a few months back. Genius.

So the new pope points out that inequality is increasing with 85 people owning more than 3.5 billion of us. But don't you dare raise taxes on the poor Richie Rich crowd. They might take their money elsewhere. They already are. They call this "plan" for planet Earth the Trans-Pacific Partnership. What is it? An injection of B12 into the American economy? No, it's more upward redistribution of wealth.

You folks go ahead and glory over only about 200 showing up. But don't say you weren't warned when the piper gets paid and you get the crumbs off the table.

1. It isn't possible to tax corporations or businesses. The cost is simply passed on to the consumer EVERY TIME so we are just taxing ourselves.

2. Simplifying the tax code to make it fair - and more importantly, manageable - so that EVERYONE pays their fair share fixes complaints from all sides of the argument. It gets rid of tax loopholes for those evil rich people and it stops paying tax refunds to those that don't pay taxes (a.k.a. Income redistribution).

Why not do these two simple things? Because those in government at every level like to do favors for their constituency that keeps them in power. Period.

Alan will call this "regressive taxation", but wouldn't be nice to at least get rid of something that we KNOW causes government corruption, abuses of power, and the rich to hide their money? Wouldn't it be nice if we all had a stake in how the government spends our taxes instead of simply voting for people because they don't tax US which is the case for those in blue states as much as it is in red states?

The housing bubble - more appropriately, mortgage bubble - was a result of loose lending practices under Clinton and encouraged by many democrat congressional leaders to force banks to loan money for mortgages to people that couldn't afford them.

It really began in the mid-1990s
Financial crises just do not happen overnight and for no special reason. The changes to the GSE system that really enabled the financial crisis began in the mid-1990s. No one change, especially at the beginning, caused the crisis by itself, but all the pieces were essentially in place by the wind down of the Enron scandal in 2001. At that point, it became a matter of reversing course in Washington, which can be a curiously difficult thing to do.

Here is an excerpt that describes the other side of the story that never gets mentioned by the left because it failed.

"In 1995, the Clinton Administration changed the law governing GSEs’ mission — the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) — to encourage more lending in poor neighborhoods. Previously, the CRA directed government to monitor banks’ lending practices to make sure they did not violate fair lending rules in poor neighborhoods. With the 1995 change, the government published each bank’s lending activity and started giving bank ratings based primarily upon the amount of lending it performed in poor neighborhoods. These changes empowered community organizations, such as ACORN, to pressure banks to increase lending activities in poorer neighborhoods — which involved reducing mortgage loan standards — or face backlash from those organizations’ private and political associates. For instance, if Chase made 100 mortgages in a poor Chicago district, and Countrywide 150, the government would likely give Chase a lower CRA rating, and community organizers could pressure politicians to make it more difficult for Chase to get licensed to do full ranges of business in new areas of the country. Low CRA ratings could also disadvantage Chase with regard to government lending programs and make it more difficult for Chase to participate in mergers and acquisitions."

The bottom line is both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were under the control of the federal government and were used to implement another "help the poor" idea called the CRA (community reinvestment act) that failed. I would argue that it is yet another example of the government interfering with the free market and incentivizing people to take risks - both lenders and borrowers - that they wouldn't have rushed into if the normal rules and common sense were in place. I'm not talking about government over-regulation, I'm talking about holding people accountable for their actions.

Sadly, Alan would like you to believe that President Bush deregulated the mortgage industry and that led to the collapse but it was really deregulation under Clinton and the arm twisting of lenders by people like Barney frank in the 1990's that caused the collapse.